… I hoped with all my might that Obama would win the presidency and end the reign of terror that the Bush Administration has inflicted on the world. Much more needs to be said about the historical significance of a White House with black residents, but not here. I am jubilant that he has won and apprehensive about how soon he and his administration will capitulate to the habitual politics of the District of Columbia. Obama has the power to resist the current, but he won’t. To do that, he would have to launch a paradigmatic shift in the way politics is taught, thought of, and practiced in this country … (full text).

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi is an Assistant Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who specializes in transnational and global histories in the Middle Eastern postcolonial context. He studies social movements and intellectual articulations of Islamic conceptions of modernity. He is currently completing a manuscript entitled Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran: Abdolkarim Soroush and the Religious Foundations of Political Reform, to be published by I. B. Tauris & St. Martin’s Press. (on Payvand /Iran News, March 3, 2008).

… He has published in varieties of academic journals such as International Sociology, International Review of Social History, Migration Review, Critique, and others. His teaching interests include transnational and global histories, contemporary histories of the Middle East, Islam and modernity, revolution, social theory, social movements, and politics and power … (History at Illinois).

He writes: … Once compared to all other coercive and military measures, the following six-point plan to resolve the crisis offers concrete benefits for both sides. The major costs of this solution (comparing to the possible hundreds of thousands of deaths, immense destruction of Iranian cities, and colossal economic price for both sides) are symbolic, for the most part, and require prevailing over issues of pride and prejudice: … (full text).

Contentious Public Religion: Two Conceptions of Islam in Revolutionary Iran, Ali Shari`ati and Abdolkarim Soroush: Two Conceptions of Islam in Revolutionary Iran “Ali Shari`ati and Abdolkarim Soroush” is an article published in International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 4 (pp. 504-523) by Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi. In this article he tries to makes a comparison between Ali Shari`ati and Abdolkarim Soroush before and after the Iranian revolution of 1979 … (full text).

… Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, assistant professor of sociology at Georgia State University, said that since World War II the United States has claimed to promote democracy but has failed to back its affirmations with action. Democracy is basically a shibboleth that we put on the table to justify our own policy, he said. Instead, he said, the United States has often supported tyrannical regimes in order to promote stability and prevent the spread of communism. The Cold War created a tendency of shortsightedness and narrow-mindedness in U.S. foreign policy, he said … (full text).

The 1980-88 war between Iran and Iraq war claimed close to one million lives on both sides of the conflict. In Iran, the war displaced four to five million people and left a legacy of collective trauma that has directly affected more than fifteen percent of the country?s population. Professor Ghamari-Tabrizi plans to examine how Iran?s veterans have expressed, maintained, and transformed their war-time experiences as they cope with the war?s residual trauma. His project follows a three-part research scheme: … (full text).

Amid the confusion and chaos surrounding Hurricane Katrina, the University’s Teachers for Peace and Justice helped students cope with their many questions. The activist group sponsored a “Teach-In” entitled “Katrina and Other Human Disasters” on Wednesday. The session was open to students and faculty members who were interested in discussing and learning more about Katrina. Teachers for Peace and Justice are faculty members who got together to organize open forum events for students to come and discuss their thoughts on pressing issues … // … The moderator and master of ceremonies for Wednesday night’s forum was Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, University professor of sociology and history … Topics of discussion included Hurricane Katrina’s link to Homeland Security, the unnatural elements of Katrina, the black Atlantic perspective on Katrina, projections of human-induced climate change and their influence on the new New Orleans, the state of grievance with the catastrophe and media coverage of the event … (full text, Sept. 23, 2005).

Theorists of secularization considered modernity an irreversible process of differentiation between mutually exclusive spheres of private vs public life. In contrast, proponents of a new paradigm argue that differentiation has strengthened religion in modern society through the establishment of religious market economies. Contrary to both views, the resurgence of religious movements in the last 20 years, particularly Islamist movements, has introduced a new form of contentious public religion that calls into question the interconnectedness of modernity with the privatization of religion. This article shows how the reintroduction of religion in the public sphere contributed to a new understanding of Islam and its relation to contemporary social life. Two distinct articulations of Islam before and after the Iranian revolution of 1979 are examined, those of Ali Shari`ati and Abdolkarim Soroush. Whereas Shari`ati transformed Islam into an ideology of social change, in his ideology critique, Soroush reinstated the enigmatic core of Islam through a hermeneutic distinction between religion and the knowledge of it. The article argues that what religion is, a theological question, is intimately linked to the sociological question what religion does. (Two Conceptions of Islam).

… Behrooz Ghamari Tabrizi, an Iran observer at Georgia State University, notes that “Iran is more worried about an Israeli attack than an American one, and the current state of hostility between Iran and Israel prevents any sort of warming between Iran and the United States” … (full text, April 7, 2003).